Chemical and Biological studies of Babine Lake

Because of the increasing industrial operations and rapidly growing human activities on the watershed of Babine Lake there have been many multi—disciplinary studies carried out in this area to study their possible impacts on the water quality and fish production (Babine Watershed Committee Annual Report l972). The major industries in this area are logging and mining. The two major mining companies currently extract nearly 9,000,000 tons of ore annually for copper and zinc. It has become the concern of the Babine Watershed Change Program Committee to conduct a study to further investigate the concentration and the chemical state of these metals and the metal binding capacity (complexing capacity) of the lake water. At the invitation of the Babine Watershed Change Committee, we conducted a short study (October 20-26, 1974) on the characteristics of several metals related to the mining activities, with a view to better understand the trace metal chemistry of the lake. Simultaneously some biological investigations were also carried out to assess the potential capacity of the water to support growth. it is hoped that the information obtained in these studies will complement results of other investigations.